Beneath the Raging Skies
by cynister
Summary: When revelations have to be seen, when absolutions have to be made. Do you shy away from your duties? Will you fail? (also implied slash warning)
1. if only

The bright orb had set upon the land once again, and he wondered whether he would see another day rising up from the East. For his days were numbered and his life had been written against the very clouds in the air. But nothing really matters, surely. Or do they? It was as bright as the fading lights, his future. One thing that he could be sure of, the only thing that was sure in his life. Never has he felt so fatalistic about his very being, but times like these often stopped him on his tracks. He was a pessimist. The worst kind.  
  
Then the long, slender darkness fell over him. The softest whisper against the floorboards woke him from his self-inflicted trance. But he didn't dare turn around, didn't dare see, afraid to behold the one figure that was burnt into his memory, even more so than his own. He closed his eyes, clenched his fists against the railings, almost willing himself to disappear. But he had been running for too long. He couldn't stop running. He wouldn't stop running. Even if he wanted to, deep down inside. The fear to face the blinding truth, even as everyone under the skies had known. He had yet to reconcile it with himself.  
  
"You fear, Elessar?" came the voice, silvery under the tendrils of Elbereth. "What was it you fear? Was it truth that you fear?"  
  
The questions flew into his direction as sure as Orc arrows, piercing and wounding his heart, and the past had not perfectly healed yet. He couldn't answer, wouldn't answer. His tongue was weighted down by a million weights, each forcing their way into his consciousness, his mind in a clout, his feelings churned within his belly, his tears threatened to spill. How many times had he displayed this weakness. How many times revellers stayed quiet, as if the tears of a king was a commonplace sight, like pigs and cattle around a farm?  
  
He felt unable. On different things, he felt unable to face his own feelings. To face the truth. The overwhelming truth, that threathened to swallow him whole. Not that he actually knew what truth it would be. He watched the orb fell, plunged into the waiting arms of the snowy peaks. He watched shadows cast throughout the land, an army of dark beings enveloping the land, clothed in mithril-hue sparks. He watched and relived his fear of his being. He watched until he could watch no more, and watched again. Finding hope into the darkness, such was Mordor. Though he was far removed.  
  
"You have conquered it, what more do you fear? Why has it come back to haunt you? It will not, lest you let it overtake your being."  
  
It sounded like accusation to his ears, although he knew better than that. No one accused him from being weak, and he hadn't been weak. He ruled the land as a king should, just and merciful, caring as a father to the land, he led armies into peace, not battles, the children ran barefooted on the streets, not knowing danger. As the sheep grazed by the lions, the country he led... They would never had blamed him, but he feared for their loathing. Such unfound fear, yet fear in itself.  
  
He waited, for he knew it would come. "I fear for the both of us." It did come. Out of his very own mouth, his very confession.  
  
"There's nothing to fear. We've decided long ago, Elessar."  
  
"The fire of our passion has stopped its mighty kindling. Yet, no one can turn back time and gave you your immortality."  
  
"You can't have prevented it."  
  
"I should have known better."  
  
"We should have. If there's anyone to be blamed, then it is the both of us. Do not bear the burden yourself. For it is not right, it is not your place to fear the future."  
  
He turned to look at the graceful lines that adorned the face he used to love. He still loved it, but somehow he felt it flying away, fleeing from him, leaving him. The adoration that used to lift his being when he saw the face never came back in the same force, day after day. He wondered if there would be anything left.   
  
"You're greying. You're fading into the shadows..." His words trembled against the velvet black of the skies.  
  
"You know, yet you grieve."  
  
"I don't know what to feel." He shook his head, trying to banish a certain thought.  
  
"Then do not feel."  
  
There was silence, a long pregnant silence that deafened the air around them. The night was so still, one would have thought they had ceased to exist. Just in a state of purgatory, the nothingness that filled one's heart, as the nightingale's music face away.  
  
"He's waiting for you, Elessar. The midsummer-hunt's preparation missed you."  
  
"I should go." He said, heavy-hearted. He should have known better than act foolishly. "I thought I would change when..."  
  
She turned and left, without a backward glance. The abrupt change in pace and direction drew a lunge from him. "You could not have known better, Elessar, and you could not have changed anything."  
  
The only words left, "If only..."  
  
And it hung, with other unsaid words, other fascination, and other regrets. As he looked down, the horses were being taken out, the grooms, the riders, and the ceremony. The clanging of drums and the gleaming swords, daggers and arrow-heads. All blurred and seemed to mill around, drawn to a center, a radiant center, of which he felt his very being was drawn onto.  
  
The radiant challenge, the danger and the sweetest pain. He smiled. 


	2. once there was nothing

"So you have a secret?"  
  
How can a voice carry such compassionate detachment? It made him wonder, something that was beyond his comprehension, nature's secret, one that he wasn't privy to know.  
  
Instead, he shook his head and galloped ahead towards the clearing, as if embracing the thick darkness for the glowworms favors not the large open spaces, vulnerable against the roaring night wind.  
  
He left behind him the twinkling forest, and his hunting group, into the black hole that engulfed him willingly, hungrily, the hisses of wind through the blades of grass deafened him. All the beter to chase the caring voices, a caring voice away. Then he simply rolled off his steed, as the panicked shouts started to fill and replace.  
  
Fill and replace, like a certain someone is doing to his heart. Mercilessly through soft whispering, sinfully, though no wrong has been inflicted.  
  
"What ails you?"  
  
The voice again, he willed it to stop.  
  
Then it stopped.  
  
And he wondered.  
  
He regretted it.  
  
Just like he'd regretted almost every turn in his life since the marriage. Since the promises. Or even before that, long before that. He regretted the ties that bound him to destiny.   
  
"Aragorn?"  
  
This was the voice that represented everything he ought to have, everything he could have had, but also everything sacred and out of reach. This voice was the end of every question and the start of all enigma. The very representation of things he could not have, would not have. The test for his dignity, and the loss of his pride. He had none.   
  
He wished he was dead.  
  
A tendril of softest touch reached his sensing nerves, and he jolted over a million stinging lightning bolt.  
  
"I understand."  
  
-What? What do you understand?- Aragorn wanted to scream and shout and vanish into the depths of Mordor. What could anyone fathom when his understanding disappear like mist and morning dew under the fearful daylight?  
  
The words, low beneath the whirl of winds. His ears strained to make it out, his brain worked harder, to decipher the one thing that he had yearned in his whole life.  
  
Though he could not understand it, he heard it loud and clear as the bells and the chimes. It reverberated through the very core of his being. He could not deny it, yet he could not understand it.  
  
But he heard it. Like a shell embracing the filling.  
  
"I know you want me." 


End file.
